This morning, when I was at the post office picking up a letter, I also stopped by Vaclavik – a computer store in Tesin. They didn’t have W8 yet, so at least we chatted about it – apparently if I buy an OEM copy without a new PC, that’s illegal, but since I have a legal W7 32-bit license and buy a boxed upgrade from them for 1,590 CZK, I’ll be able to upgrade to W8 64-bit. So I placed an order with them for this OS, and they said it should arrive on Monday.
Which Monday, he didn’t say. But at home, since the “Activate Windows” screen with the “Buy a new key” button kept popping up, I clicked it and suddenly I could buy a new Windows – I’m sure that wasn’t possible yesterday. Admittedly, I hadn’t tried it in the last 2 weeks, but it definitely didn’t work before. After pressing the “Buy a new key” button, I entered my home address, then my payment card details (the other option was to pay via PayPal), and a moment later I had the key on my screen.
They then sent the same key to my email and finally also offered Windows activation, which I did, as the following screenshot shows:
In the end, the price was 1,507.66 CZK, which according to today’s CNB exchange rate on mesec.cz is 78.66 USD. It did say 59.99 USD as the OS price and 9.58 USD VAT, which comes to 69.57 USD in total, so the final price was 9.09 USD higher, but oh well, nobody told me what exchange rate they use for the conversion, so I paid 174.23 CZK more. Even so, it came out even cheaper than an upgrade from a legal WXP, WV, W7.
Still better than buying a boxed OEM license https://operacni-systemy.heureka.cz/oem-microsoft-windows-8-professional-64-bit-en/ starting FROM 2,984 CZK or an upgrade license https://operacni-systemy.heureka.cz/microsoft-windows-8-professional-en-vup/ starting FROM 1,590 CZK + shipping. And as a bonus, no installing of, say, W7 first, and no reinstalling W8 from scratch.
And that pays off!